Recent reviews by The Gaming Beehive

For more details about the game and the story, check my video https://youtu.be/z6ygNoOoR7c

This Strange Realm of Mine is very good FPS with a lot to say about touchy subjects, but sometimes a little bit on the nose. I played the game only once and it took me 3h and 22 minutes to see one ending, but a quick look at the achievements, I think there is 2 more endings with 2 different play styles. Graphics won't win any awards, but they are pretty good. I think if they were more realistic, the game will loose it's charm. The world is reminiscent of Minecraft, but with little more fidelity in the textures, while the characters are strictly sprites (like in Doom, for example), which no matter where you standing, they always look ate you. Kinda creepy to be honest. People compare the art style to the original Doom (and the game as whole), but I don't really agree with that. I see why, but the art can stand on it's own. Not very original, but never the less good and does the job. The shooting is great. The weapons have kick to them, but unfortunately they are only 4 melee (there is no difference between them) and 4 to shoot– pistol, shotgun, uzi and sniper rifle. In most cases you will get certain weapons at certain levels or maybe not. There is level without a single weapon. This might be strange, but in the context of the level and the game is understandable. What I find neat is when you reload a weapon and you still have some bullets in the clip/magazine, you loose them. So becareful, because there is no abundance of ammo lying around. Also the reloading is not really fast. Another thing to consider. I want emphasis this : this is not strictly an FPS that your only job is shoot creatures. This is not Doom. Yes, you do shoot and it' feels great, but the story is the highlight of the game.

Sound is mostly great. Music is phenomenal. It can be creepy, it can makes you anxious, even in parts where the music is calm and you are suppose to feel safe, there is notes of restlessness, because you have a long road ahead, you can't relax completely. Enemies don't make any noises, weapons sound and feel great, without the shotgun. The sound doesn't have this punch, that to correspond to how devastating it is. Also there is no voice acting.

The level design is straightforward and there nothing to explore and no secrets or at least I didn't find any. There dungeons, abandoned buildings, floating islands, space ship, castle-like level and so on. All of them are nice looking, some can be quite creepy, others are whimsical. Very diverse as a setting and feeling. Also the dev try to change the gameplay from time to time, by introducing couple of side-scrolling levels. Over all i'm happy with the game and there is replayability in terms of the story and the shooting is solid. If you are in a philosophical mood, spiced with great shooting, I recommend the game on full price. If not just wait for a sale, because I think it's worth experiencing the game at least once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDssOWo3uM8

In the world of video game most zombie games are in first, third or isometric view. You take control over some human, but in how many you can drive a car and slaughter zombies? Not many. This is the thing that intrigue me here. And the game is properly named – Zombie Driver.

The game have a lot of video option. Except resolution you can find clouds, bloom, FXAA, fog, V-sync, SSAO, fullscreen and shadow type. Despite all those settings and the HD in the name, the game is not that good looking. It's not ugly, just okay. But to be honest most of the times you won't even notice the graphics quality, because there is a danger to be surrounded by zombies and you will drive all the time. The bad texture mostly noticeble when the game stop you to show something.

You play as a nameless character, a taxi driver, that is caught in a city during a zombie outbreak. He now have to do the military's job. Why? No one knows. Even in the game is mentioned that. To story is the worst thing here. It's not worth paying attention. You do few things here to progress it – save someone, clear a place to move the base, kill something that spawns zombies, plant a gas sparying device and the game is over. Some of the people that you save are saying things that are making hints for something deeper, but ultimately the story goes nowhere. Do some missions and get out of the city.

I don't mind a bad story if the gameplay is good. Here it's just that. The controls are fine. I try controller, but I end up playing with mouse and keyboard. With them it's much more fun. You start with a your taxi and by doing missions you will unlock more vehicles and get money. The cash can be also earned by driving through zombies and break what can be break in the world. With the money you will upgrade your cars and weapons. The upgrades for all straightforward – more ammo, bigger explosions, faster car etc. So pretty much that's it. You drive around, kill zombies, get cash, upgrade vehicle. You don't have all the weapons in all the time. They are on the ground spread around the level and you have drive through them. And all are useful. The thing I found is you need a truck that can take a lot of damage and have good ramming points. After that other vehicles are useless, at least to me. I played with Auroch through most of the game and the only time I change it is when I need to save more than 10 people. For those cases I used a bus, which is pretty decent. The speed of both vehicles is fast enough. The map don't have many places that you can drive really fast. The vehicles have the tendency to fly in the air when you hit a wall. So for me there is no point of using some of sport cars. They can be destroyd easily.

From time to time the army gives you a different vehicle – tank or a bulldozer or a truck. This is a neat idea to change a little bit the gameplay. Beside the main objective you have a secondary. It's wise to do them, because you get more money or car or something else. But ultimately the missions are as I mention above – kill, save or destroy.

There three bosses in the game and all are fun. They have some similar attack and you circle around them and shoot them. Near all the bosses have those places that spawn zombies constantly and it's wise to destroy them first.

The world is really great. It's not a huge map, but it's big enough. It's very diverse – train stations, houses, industrial zone, suburban area and so on. There are a lot of shorcuts that can be found and it's helpful know them in situations where you are in a hurry. Almost all objectives have some sort of time limit.

Sound design is okay. Shooting, engines, explosions and other effects are good, but the music is not memorable. It adds a little bit tension, it's fast paced, it's sometimes orchestral, it uses a lot of drums and guitars. It kinda remind me of Resident Evil the movie soundtrack and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2. It's a game about shooting zombies and I don't excpect creepy music. I want high octane tracks and that's what i've got. But it's there somewhere in the background. Sadly I can't point one track that stands out above the other.

Voice acting is bad, especially the people you save. They are all steriotypes you can think of – gamer, scared scientist, obnoxious politician and so on. I know, the focus of the game is the gameplay, but the problem is you can't skip any dialog.

It seem so far that I dislike the game, but actually I don't. I'm just a little bit disappointed The game for me is just okay. I really like to run over zombies or to blast them to pieces, but the main campaign gets kinda repetetive, but thankfuly it's not that long. I took me around 4 hours the finish it. There is too many minor things that annoy me. Beside the campaign I have problems also with the weapons. They are only four. Don't get me wrong they are all great, especially when you upgrade the rockets and railgun, but they are only four. When you combine all this with the bad voice acting, the repetition, it's brings the game down for me. But there is one saving grace – the Blood Race. It racing with other cars and zombies on the road. I had so much fun shooting other vehicles. There are 3 different type of races and I like all of them, especially the Eliminator. Here you have to destroy certain number of cars for a limited time. You can shoot them, you can ram them or combination of both. As a conclusion I would say I recommend the game, but on sale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXeL_YPyxOc

When I hear “bunch of misfits” I always think of these guys here. They are united by one goal, they are brave, they are weird, they are human, robot, mole and a smelly old man. They are ... Lionhearts!!! This is one of the wackiest game i've ever played. I can't express how crazy and absurd (in a good way) are the story and characters. I write this review with a huge grin on my face. In almost every cutscene I laugh my ass off.

You are the Lionhearts, a bunch of misfits, who are trying to save their kingdom from the evil king Forge. He wants to unlock the power of the Book of Rule, so it's up to our heroes to steal the book from him and use it to undo all the bad things. Let me introduce the Lionhearts (drum roll): Q – big robot that like to drink tea and he always have a cup in his hand; Jonesy – a mole, often mistaken for a rat and everybody likes to make fun of him; Rexus – short and smelly old man, that put a spell to locked the book's power. He have some sort of jedi powers and he is blind as a bat; finally the character you control Roman. He always wear a red scarf around his mouth, like he is in the wild west. Truth to be told the game kinda feel that way. The story is complete bonkers and I love it. It will take to very different places and you will meet a whole bunch of insane characters, more crazy than our heroes. King Fogre is also insane. He sends his son Stig to lead his army againts the Lionhearts and he is … to say it politely, not very bright person. I don't want to spoil more. One last thing. In every cutscene you will see amazing stuff.

The gameplay is straightforward. It's a third-person shooter and you play only as Roman, but Jonesy and Q are always behind you. They help, but you will do most of the shooting. You can give them three command – guard an area, return to you and defend you. They have their health bars, but if some of them die it's not instant game over. You will see them in the next level if the story dictates that. I try always to make them run over a health pack, but it's not that easy.

The weapons are great. You have some standard like submachine gun, sniper rifle and bolt action rifle, but the others are amazing – Gurnar personal mortar who looks like a tuba and fires granades, rocket launcher that can fire up to four homing rockets and my favourite and the most unique ever created in any media – land shark gun! (появяват се думите една по една и една акула) You fire it at some target and the shark start “swimming” and then it start to eating enemies. It will follow you around for a short period of time. The ammo for all the weapons can be acquired in two ways. The first is by killing enemies they drop different types (they also drop health packs) and the second is by going into “The Grunt & Polewart”. It's a pub. There also you can change your weapon, fill up your ammo and health. What better way to get them and drink a beer.

The secondary weapons are also insane. Sticky bomb that makes enemies run in panic when it's on them. It's funny to see them running around and screaming. There are more. Guy Fawks Traitor bomb – turns enemies againts each other, Knockout bomb – giant boxing glove that punches enemies from a distance, Portable Black Hole and finally the best from the secondary – Tropsy Turvy bomb. It turns the world upside down and enemies fall to their death. If the weapons were all standard the gameplay would be kinda boring.

The level design is okay. There vast open spaces, but earlier levels feel kinda empty. Yes, you will shoot constantly, but there isn't something interesting sights to see. But later levels are much better. Most of the buildings can be destroyed and for such an old game, it's interesting to see it. You will see snowy villige, shooting bad guys near the beach or in a trenches and so on. The levels have this weird mix setting between middle ages and steam punk. Really interesting design. There also hidden tokens spread around the levels and when you find them you will unlock things like big head, big hands, another difficulty and so on.

After every few levels there is a turret section. They are 2-3 minutes long and don't overstay their welcome. They are fun and challenging enough. And speaking of difficulty this game is not easy. The enemies are not Storm troopers. They are accurate and they will shoot on sight. I died quite a few times, so you have to use all your tools to survive.

One of the best things here is the voice acting. It's simply amazing. When you combine it with the great writing, you have fantastic recipe for laughing a lot. All actors have british accent. Some sound more scottish, others more english. They all do amazing job. Even the side characters are greatly voiced. My favourite character is Rexus. He is more goofy and with him are the best scenes.

The soundtrack is also good. Typical orchestral tracks, but some have this military vibe and feel like you are in a war. Others are more ambient, but nothing is more satisfying that to kill enemies accompanied by scottish bagpipes. They will lift your spirit up and you will fight more agressively!

The things I don't like here are not many. The graphics are not a problem for me. The game came out in 2003, so you can't expect to look great. The biggest problem is the lack of enemy variety. You will see all the time the grunt with bolt action rifle, sniper rifle or the guy with submachine gun or granade launcher. There are few flying like zeppelin and the really big enemies (they are tough and fun to fight), but they are few and far between. The other problem that people may have is with the gameplay. It's repetetive, but I like it. The crazy guns and funny cutscence is what kept the game become stale.

The game is made by Planet Moon Studios, which also made another underrated cult classic – Giants: Citizen Kabuto, a game ahead of it's time. It's like their faith to make underrated games. If you didn't guess by now, I love AnD. Everything is over the top! The characters, the guns, the enemies. It's funny as hell, you have crazy weapons, hilarious cutscenes, it runs great on a modern PC and on top of that you have a freaking jetpack! Instantly 10/10! Bad joke aside this is a refreshing idea to spice up the gameplay. It adds verticality. Some enemies have it too and it's fun to fly around and try to shoot each other. Or just grab the homing rocket launcher. You have it in almost half of the game and it's amazing! It's not an expensive title, so go now and buy it. I had hell of a good time with Armed and Dangerous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3OUj30FaYc

Relic Hunter Zero is very competent top-down shooter with rogue-lite elements. The game is about one thing – shooting evil space ducks and turtles. I played almost two hours and this I my first impressions of the game. Oh, I almost forgot – the game is absolutely free!

Options are pretty decent. Fullscreen or window, resolution (it's actually windows size, but it's the same thing), max dynamic objects, particle effects, dynamic shadows, persistant objects and reflections. There is only local co-op, but one person have to use mouse and keyboard and the other controller. Finally, the keys can be rebindable.

Graphics are pretty good, nicely drawn pixel art. Characters you play and the enemies have more details put on them than the levels. I wish for more visual variation of the levels, because they are kinda bland. They differentiate moslty by color – orange, red, blue etc. What I really like here is the minor details. When you kill an enemy he doesn't disappear, he stay dead on the ground or when you dig you throw dirt everywhere and so on. Those little details contribute for making the levels looking like a real battlefield and a little bit less bland.

The gameplay is pretty simple. It's a top-down shooter without any complicated mechanics. You can jump into action right away. There is a tutorial if you feel like going through one. In the beginning you can choose between two characters – Jimmy and Pinkyy. They have different stats. I choose Pinky and her primary weapon is … giant fists. She hit slowly, but do tons of damage. It feel so good to one-hit enemies. Pinkyy is like a tank with giant fists. Shortly after the beginning you will find your first weapon – a shotgun. It's highly inaccurate at long range, but at close is a beast. You can carry only two weapons. As much as the fists are good, soon you have to ditch them, because in later levels is required a certain distance from enemies. Also with the RMB you aim with laser sight. This also shows you the range of effectiveness of the weapon. You move slower, but the guns are more accurate. As you progress through the levels you will get a lot of different weapons – SMG, machine gun, pistol, sniper rifle and so on. You get them from dead enemies or they are just put on a box somewhere in the level. You have three types of ammo – light, medium and heavy, which you collect throughout the levels. The best weapons, like the sniper rifle which is my favourite, are using heavy ammo.

Except health, you also have a shield, which regenerate, and a stamina bar. You can dash or run.

Inside a level beside weapons and ammo, you can also find big and small med packs, overshield and bomb, which is super shield.

Since you are relic hunter you will dig for them. Each consists of three parts. Before moving to the next level sometimes a horse will tell you that he detected part of one somewhere in the area, so you go and search for it. And you better do it. The benefit of finding all parts of a relic is that they give you buffs, like more health. Also you can buy them. After every third level there is a shop with three items. They can be part of relic, a weapon, ammo, health etc. The cash for them you get from collecting pink stars after enemy is dead. They are your bounty.

The rogue-lite part is when you die you get back to your space ship and start all over again. There also you can equip the things you unlock – weapons, relics, ammo etc or change your character, choose a stage and play endless mode. You can even buy the stage you want to start.

Speaking of levels, they are okay and have some destructible envoirment and don't overstay their welcome. There blue boxes and pipe-looking bushes, that can be used as a cover, but the can be blasted to pieces. Spread around the levels are ammo, bombs, health and shields. When you defeat all enemies you'd better search the level for all those thing I mentioned, because it's vital for your survival.

Sound design is great. The music is really good. Some are fast and like the heart-pumping action, other have more jazzy feel. Yeah, chip tune jazz. I like it. As a whole it's awesome. Sound effects are great too. The shotgun have this meaty and powerful sound, pistols sound weaker as a pistol should be, sniper rifle feels like it's going to rip off you arm and so on. Great work.

The game is fantastic! There is no doubt about that. It have great gameplay, soundtrack, a lot of stuff to unlock and the only negative I have is the campaing is too short (only 12 levels), but I can counter that. There is an endless mode. One more thing. The game is open source, so you can create mods easily. Go now and get it. I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kls62rkbxsE

The Adventures of Tree is side-scroller, open world, action adventure, where you play as … well, a tree. Your world, an island, is invaded by evil Florps – purple furry creatures and it's up to you to save your people ...um or fellow trees I guess? I play the game for almost 7 h and this is my first impressions.

For a 2D game it have a lot of settings. In the graphics section there are Resolution, Subtitles, Motion Blur, V-sync, Fullscreen and Depth of Field. The game runs smoothly with 60 FPS and you can even play it on Windows XP. Audio options are plenty. There six different sliders – ambient, movie, mob, GUI, music and others. Excelent work! There is full controller support and you can rebind the keys, even for the controller. I didn't try how is the gameplay with him, but I think it's the preferable to play with a controller. Keyboard and mouse work just fine.

I'm not a big fan of the graphic style. It's hand drawn and cute, but I didn't like that much the character models and the world. This is highly subjective and didn't put me off. I really enjoy the game, despite not liking the graphic style that much. The world is vibrant and colorful (and dangerous), even the evil Florps are also kinda cute. Consider this: my favourite game of all time is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and the graphics there are bad.

I started the review with the story, so now gameplay is next. As a mentioned it's side scroller action adventure with a big world to explore. You start by creating your character. Then you are free to roam the island, but be careful. You may reach dangerous places before you are strong enough to deal the enemies there and you will die. Then after you respawn you have to go to the place you die to collect your stuff. The first thing you have to know is you have three bars in the top left corner – health, hunger and stamina. So you have to manage them. Food is actually easy to acquire. Around the world there are a lot of fruits and vegetables to eat, but meat is preferable. There are creatures like birds and boars to kill and get raw meat from them. Since it's raw you have to cook it. The food from one type is stacking, so it's doesn't take much space in your invetory. I heavily advise to supply yourself with a lot of meat, because with food not only you replenish your hunger meter, but also your health. Later I found that there are potions.

So this management part is not the only thing you can do. You will fight and do quests. Most of jobs you take are just fetch qustes. But the will lead you to new places and you will have to kill creatures for food or to progress. The fighting is okay. You stabing or you swinging. I know that you can buy bow, but I don't have it yet. So beside him there are a lot of different swords, axes and others weapons with different stats. By doing quests and selling thing, you will get money In almost every villige you have a vendor that sells weapons, shields, glasses, pipes, cigarettes, hats, lanters for light and so on. Everything have some benefit for you like lower hunger or higher jump, so it wise to not sell everything, you never know where your quest will lead you. For example. There is a quest where i had to go high in the mountain, but it's freezing. So you have to find something to keep me warm, because you are constantly loosing life. It's a hat. You don't have the inventory space to carry around everything. You will store your stuff in chests around the island. You can buy more things than those that I mentioned to ease your journey, but you have to see the for yourself.

There is also light RPG system here. When you level up, you get upgrade points to put in 10 different stats. Creatures respawn, so you will fight and gain xp constantly.

Enemies you encounter are very diverce. Spiders, bees, ice hedghogs, slimes and so on. Almsot everyone of them will drop something that you can sell or you need it ot complete a quest. In the description in Steam it's written that it have 50 different creatures and i think i saw until now around the half of them. Also i fought two bosses so far. The first was not too difficult, but the second, a rock monster, killed my a couple of times. They were fun to fight.

The world is big and every place you visit is different. You will go to different villiges, caves, climb a mountain, go through a swamp and so on. There you will see a lot of trees, from which you will get quests. The great thing about the world is that's full of secrets and there is no hand holding. You will see places that can be access only by having some equipmet or something else and you have figure it out what you need. Exploration is required, because you can find stuff you normaly have to pay or expensive things to sell. There are also things you can do that can lead to some strange consequences. Take the money from mill, trust me. There is also fast travel and thank God for that. You have a map and by opening it you can travel to the places you discovered. My advice is to buy a bigger map as soon as posible. It will save you a lot of walking. I don't know if there some consequences, but every night i go to my house and sleep. You can travel while it's night, but if sleeping is implemented here, it must be for some reason.

The sound design is okay. Fx are good, but the music is ... i can't remember a single track. It's there is, fit the fun setting, but it's nothing special. However there is one track that stand out a little bit. When you see a girl with a guitar pay her 20 coins. That is all i'm going to say.

I have one big problem with the game and it's the inventory. When you need to eat, you have to open it, then to click on something and the game doesn't stops. Imagine that when you fight a boss. That is why the rock monster kill at least 7-8 times, because i couldn't heal my self in time. If there is a key just for the food to heal you fast, it would be awesome. Through my time with the game i have encounter few small bugs and one big. The game froze and i have to close it from the task manager. This was just once and the game was still in EA. Also one or two times the game didn't register my hits at all, so i had to restart the game. After it's full release i didn't encounter any of those bugs again.

The game came out of EA on first of March and it's good to see that it's not abandoned and unfinished. Despite not likeing that much the art style and the rather simplistic combat, i really enjoy the game. It's fun, colorful, offers hours of gameplay, doesn't hold your hand, have a big world explore, secrets to be discovered and it suppose to have different endings based on your choices throughout the game. I recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUpH9nKZIyY

Meltdown is a good game. It's an addicting twin stick shooter with drop in, drop out multiplayer. I played little more than 3 hours, so this is my first impressions of the game.

It's an okay mobile port. It's not the best, nor the worst. There are not enough settings. Just graphics quality, resolution, music and fx sliders and Vsync. Keys are not rebindable. Also there is option for Aim-assist and I think it might be a good idea to be on. I'll explain later way.

There isn't a story here. Well, it's not entirly true, but I wouldn't call it this a plot. You are traped in a space station as result of system malfunction. That's it. In this case I don't mind the lack of any story, because the game is all about shooting. Tense, fun and addicting.

Graphics are alright. All charaters have this black outline to feel cel shaded, but actually they are not. At close inspection the main character is not that good looking, but you see him only when you buy stuff. Overall levels, enemies and your character are nice to look at, but not great.

You've seen this kind of gameplay a milion times before. Here it doesn't offer something new. It's simple and generic, but at the same time fun. You just run, gun, collect coins, chips, mystery boxes and gain XP. Basic stuff. You buy new firearms, armor, melee weapons. Guns have six different stats that can be upgraded. They are all standard – more damage, increase fire rate etc. But beside money for them you need chips. The catch is you can't upgrade the six of them, only three, so choose wisely or if you want to make correction, reset them, but i'm not sure if you will get back your money and chips. The two of them are gathered from dead enemies. And armors can be upgraded too. You can also pick up two power ups – double damage and nuke.

The coolest feature here is drop in, drop out multiplayer. You start alone, but at any time others can join you, up to three more people. It's defenently more fun and little bit more easy to have someone by your side to watch your back literally. You can do the same thing, join someone else to play together.

At the end of each level you will open mystery boxes. From them you can get xp, chips, coins, lives or nothing. Yes, here you have lives. If you loose all of them you have start at the beginning of the level.

Beside all those things, you can buy additional cosmetics like eye patch, hats, shoulder pads and so on. They don't just change the appearance, they also have additional buffs like more health, more damage etc.

After you level up, you have points to distrubute in three directions – specialist, medic and soldier. They also can be reset. In the beginning they are standard buffs, like more damage, but later they become more interesting – health regeneration, fire rate increase with weapon overheat and so on. Weapons can overheat and when this happen you have to wait them to cooldown.

Enemies are all robots with different attacks. They are diverse and require different tacktics to kill them. The two bosses I encounter are fun and tough to fight, especially when you are alone.

Level design is okay. In the beginning the levels are small, but later they are getting bigger. All have similar design – bridges, sandbags, boxes, cars, froklifts, small walls to take cover and so on. Here there is a cover system, but I rarely use it. First 10 levels have different design, than later ones are different, so you have a little bit diversity. Sometimes you'll get locked in a area and to get out you have to kill everything to progress. There is one “But”. As I said all are similar to each other. You will see the same boxes, the same sandbags and after 3 h with the game the layouts and design are still the same

Sound is great. All weapons sound appropriate and feel meaty and explosions are good. The soundtrack is really great. You will hear techno and dubstep, fitting excelent in this sci-fi setting. I won't listen it every day, but throughout my time with the game I never wanted to stop the music.

I have one big issue with the game and few small ones. You can clearly see in the video that the crosshair have to be near a target, not on him to hit him, but this depends where the enemy come from. This is so bizzare and annoying. That's why I said in the beginning maybe the aim-assist is not a bad idea. Through my time with the game I encounter two bugs, one was game breaking. The first was I was frozen when I respawn and I lost a life. And the other was, I fall through the floor in to the abyss. Both bugs are just one time experience. Also the game is build around grinding and there is no doubt about it. I reach a point where I have to repeat few levels to get a better gun. And lastly, almost all menus have to be draged with the mouse to move them and it's annoying. Obvious mobile port.

The game doesn't do anything bad, nor anything great and that's fine. It's a really simple, yet addicting. Easy to pick up and play. But to be fair after 3 h I start to get a little bit bored. I've seen what the game have to offer. You are doing the same thing over and over again. It's a perfect time killer, a game where you can go in play 1or 2 levels before you go somewhere for example. There two additional modes – Wave Attack and Deathmatch, but I didn't try them. As much as I have problems with the game, i'm kinda addicted to it, maybe because of the simplicity and almost great gameplay. It have good gameplay, great sound design and it still have few players online, but it have this annoyance with the crosshair, suffers from repetition both in gameplay and level design. I recommend it, but on sale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX-EXqcsSoA

Spirits of Xanadu it's not what I expected. It caught me completely off guard. It's weird, but in a good way. A way that I like. At first glance it looks like a low polygon sci-fi generci shooter, but believe me it's more than that. It's hard to talk about the game and not spoil anything. I'll try my best to avoid spoilers.

There descent amount of video options here – resolution, fullscreen, V-sync, shadows, film grain, FXAA, SSAO, depth of field, bloom and motion blur. For some odd reason when everything is on high, my framerate drops to 30 and I exceed the system requirements. So I had turn off V-sync and SSAO. But maybe the problem is in my PC, I don't know. No matter if you put everything on high it won't make the game pretty. It have this simplistic art style and I love it. This is a design choice. Also the keys are rebindable and you can find a ton of different options in the options menu like Field of View, Difficulty, sound volume and so on. Overall you can find a lot of settings.

The year is 1983 and you are send to the research ship Xanadu. She calmly stay around the orbit of a mysterious planet. From a few months her crew hasn't send a single messege. Now alone you have find what happened on the ship. Piece by piece you will put together the story by finding audio logs and pieces paper. Usually I don't searching for both in other games. However in this case I don't know why, but I don't have a problem with that. Keep in mind that this is the only way to understand what happen. The great writting help a lot too. The story begs for more than one playthrough. It have three distinct endings with different requirments to see them and there are a lot of things to find, events to be interpreted. I saw some weird things and make me curious and I wanted to know more, what the dev try to tell with all this symbolism. I like when a game or movie crawls under my skin like that. For me this is smart storytelling.

The gameplay is simple. When you arive on Xanandu, you immediately find a lazer gun. So it's part shooter. But the other part is more interesting for me – scavenging hunt. The game is not all about shooting. It's more about adventuring and finding what happen. There three weapons in total – pistol, shotgun and SMG. The shooting is just fine. I complete the game only with the lazer gun, because I didn't find the other two and it's not necessary. They certainly would make my life easier. Like I said it's about the story. There is even a optional “Peacfull” mode. If you don't like shooting robots, you can enable it and just explore the ship, solve puzzles and find what happen. This is such a cool idea.

Puzzles are not hard and most of them have common sense. Get something, put it there or remove this. Simple puzzles. Some are kinda obscure and I complete them by accident. Others are obvious, like find a code for a lock door, but where is it, it's the difficult part. There a lot of hidden stuff.

The enemies here are all different type of robots. Some are flying and shoot electricity, other shoot lazers, third suicide by exploding near you and finaly a turret with shield. I think it's enough variety, considering the length of the game.

Except sound of your gun, the robots you encounter and a little ambient sound, most the time there isn't something else to hear. They are great. This is not a horror game, but it defenently have a creepy atmosphere. Still, you are on a space ship with missing crew, aggressive robots and weird things happening around you. There is almost no music, which is a great idea.

The only voice acting you will hear is from the recordings and it's really good. The actors do a great job to let you know how they feel – sad, desperate, drunk and so on.

The level design is good. The ship is not a huge and you will familiarize quickly with Xanadu. All room are distinct. There are crew quarters, laboratory, bridge, offices and so on. You have to walk around the ship to piece together the story. The ship is interactive. You can open cabinets, lockers and so on to search for clues. You can even eat, drink and smoke. It's not necessery, unless you want the achievment for that. It's a neet little thing. Also there are mini-games. I found only one, a simple kill all zombies. One of the coolest things here is no hand holding. Not even where to save your game. You arrive on the ship and you are free to go wherever you want. The only way to know where you are are is a map on the walls. It shows your current location. As a whole the ships feel like it came out from 80's sci-fi movies and it's awesome

Rarely i've been invested in a game or a movie like this. As i mentioned in the beginning at first glance it's doesn't seems to be anything special. The game don't have high production value, but it doesn't have to. I feel the graphics are a design choice. Don't write off the game. The shooting is solid, but it's not the center of the game. It's the story. When you find out what happen, you can see it's not entirly original, but the way unfolds, what you see, the symbolism is what caught my attention. It's well crafted story. The only thing people might not like is the lenght. I beat it in 2 hours, because i wonder around the ship exploring. Some reach the end in just an hour. But the game begs to be played again and that's why i think the lenght is perfect. I even found something, a secret, that can ease my second playthrough. One final thing. People are saying if System Shock and Deus Ex are making a baby and Kubrick shooting it, this will be the result – Spirits Wideshut 1983 Space Odessy. Actually this is my interpretation of the words. The say it have a System Shock and Deus Ex vibe with a pinch of Kubrick. Go now and buy the game. I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9EjSj8f4cI
Aerannis is almost great 2D metroidvania action adventure game with stealth. The problems is the repetition in the gameplay section. I'll cover this later. If you are into such type of games get it right now, it's not expensive and it does one thing great – storytelling

Here options are almost non existent. No audio or video settings at all. Just two options for fullscreen, three for windowed, difficulty and limiting or not the fps. It's a 2D game after all, but even in fullscreen you have black borders and it would be nice to have some audio sliders. You can play with keyboard and rebind the controls, but it's not that intuitive, so controller is what I played the whole game. The problem is I had to use third party softwere, because the game didn't recognize my controller. Once I configure the buttons, controlling the character was great.

The story take places in Bulgarian City of Plovdiv in a dystopian future ruled by women, where men don't exist, because they are forced to undergo hormone replacement therapy. Society is treating them really bad as second hand humans, insulted by almost everyone, only useful for reproduction. They are called “Snowflakes”. You play as Ceyda Farhi, assassin who kills people for a living. She is transformed too. Ceyda uncovers dark conspiracy threaten the humanity. Pretty standard story in the beginning, but it's getting way better later and even tackles sensitive topics – transgender people, femisim, hate and few other things. But this is not the core of the story. It's the supernatural conspiracy, but those topics are well implemented. At first I was thinking there will be nothing to remember, but later “Wow!!! This is really good”. The pacing is really great and when you see it's not just a “save the world situations”, it will involved you and the “fault” for this is the great writing. Ceyda is really fleshed out and great character. I wanted to know what will happen next. But keep in mind those sensitive topics if you want to play the game. There is more beside them, but you have to see it for yourslef. The reason why I enjoy the story so much is, because I didn't read the description. I'm saying that, because part of it is spoiled there. It's a good thing to go blinded in a game. Also there are two endings and I think both are great, but one is more fitting for the story that is told here.

There isn't much to talk about the graphics. They are great. Beautiful, colorful, detailed and vibrant pixel art will please your eyes. Every part of the world – building, trees, even signboards, are great to look at and diverse. Ceyda's and enemies movement and details are great. When she fall from really high, you see her make this scared cartoon face and it's awesome.

The gameplay is pretty standard. You can go left and right, later even up. You start the game with a gun, who fire slowly at first and also have a charge shot, and a noise maker to distract enemies. Later you will gain the ability to hang on ledges, run fast and wall jump. By acquiring those abilities, you will acces parts of the world, previously unreachable. But you go to those places, when the story requires it.

Except noise maker you will get two more gadgets – a sticky bomb and a boomerang. They are usefull not only for killing enemies, but also to remove obstacles on your path.

You can try to can run and gun, but stealth is well implemented here and it's useful. In some levels it's required to not get caught. If the enemy spot you, it's instant failure, but you restart at the nearest checkpoint. The mechanics are simple – you crouch and walk slowly behind an enemy, grab him and kill him. I already mention the noise maker, but you can also use vents to get around them or hide inside doors or cardboard boxes. Even if the objective doesn't include full stealth, it's better, but not necessery, to sneak on enemies, especially on those with heavy armor.

Enemies are diverse enough. In the beginning you will face regular with guns, later with swords, power armor, tough one with a shield, goo looking creatures and even bees. Beside them there few type of robots. The biggest treath is the enemy with the shield. If he sees you, he fires a plasma ball that can pass through solid surfaces and it follows you. So for them the best tactic, if it's available, is to grab him from behind.

Boss battles are great. The all have completely different tactics to beat them. This is surprised me a lot. And there isn't a single repeating boss. Some are kinda annoying and it took awhile to beat them, but overall they are a blast to fight.

Controls are great. If you fall or get hit, it's entirly your fault. You can even control hight of the jump and move Ceyda while in air. This allow me to jump out of vent and while in mid air go through a door and grab an enemy from behind.

Health is restored by buying a health item from the shop. You have instant access to it. Sadly this is the only thing you can buy, nothing else. The other ways you can restore it is when enemy drops a health, when you kill him and when saving the game. They also drop crystals, nano machines, which are the curency here. And when you finish a job, you also get money.

Level design is good. All outside areas you visit are great, especially when you get to the final level, but inside buidings are just okay. They are just corridors without any branching paths. Most of them are design, if you want, to use stealth. There are boxes, vents, lamps and so on. Places you visit have different theme like office, garden, high tech facility, cave and so on. There is a lot diversity in the level design. You can enter in buildings, but only when the story dictates it.

Sound is great. There isn't voice acting and that's perfectly fine. Effects are nice and they are similar to SNES era games. The highlight is the soundtrack. It's really great. All tracks have this 70-80's dystopian futuristic sound, but modernized and it's not chiptunes. They are vibrant like the world you are in. So well fitting, fast paced, heart pumping. When you fight a boss the music changes dramaticly to have tension and those track are also great.

Most of the issues I have are minor things. But there are two big problems I have. The first is the lack of exploration. When I see game branded as metroidvania I expect exploration to find secrets and other great stuff. Yes, there one or two upgrades hidden, but it's not enough. The other is repetitions. Maybe somewhere in the middle of the game, I start to see that some people might find the gameplay kinda repetetive. As for me, I didn't find that much. It doesn't offer something new, but what it does, it does it great. Honestly, the story is what kept me going. There few small issues. You have only one weapon and I'm not counting the gadgets. I know it's not run 'n' gun game, but still it would be nice to have at least 1 or 2 weapons more. Grabbing on ledges is counterintuitive. It's not automaticly done. You have to press and hold the direction the character is facing and after it catches on some surface, you can release the button. This apply to wall jumping too. It took me awhile, but eventually got use to it. There other little issues, but those are my main complains.

I enjoy my time with Aerannis. There little jokes in the game that put a smile on my face, but unless you are from Bulgaria you won't get them. There probably better metroidvania games, but this one is definitely worth your time. The world is great, graphics are great, the soundtrack is really good, but the best part here is the story. It's well written and it have two endings, which in my opinion stand on their own and you don't have to play the whole game to see both of them. Of course, it's not a perfect game.But nothing stop from enjoying the game. It's worth buying even just for the story. I recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84jEsLSe91Y

Memento Mori – remember that you can die. This is the medieval Latin theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. It is related to the ars moriendi ("The Art of Dying") and related literature. Memento Mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character, by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. This is taken from Wikipedia and it's essential for part of the game.

This game have a lot of options. The game is highly scalable – resolution, monitor frequency, V-sync, AA, shader quality, texture filtering, mipmaping, dynamic shadows and reflections. But when I put everything on high the framerate tanks. I have decent PC and this shouldn't happen, the game is from 2008. Also there are a lot of audio options and even if you want your cursor can be animated or not, which is a neat little feature.

In the game you control two characters. The first is Larisa Svetlova – ex-police officer in Russia, now working for Interpol. The second and the main character here is Maxim Durrand. He use to forge painting and sell, until he got caught by Larisa. Instead sending him to jail, he agree to become informant for the russian police. Both Max and Lara are drag in investigation by Colonel Ostankovich. There was an alarm failure in Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg and Ostankovich that something happens. He force Lara to send Max to see if it's missing something in the museum. Of course there is – few paintings From here on their own they travel to Lisbon, Lyon, residence in Scotland and even in Finland in search for the missing paintings. Their journey is acompanied by mysterious deaths, secret signs, interrogating suspects and solving puzzles. The story is good, but not great. It starts slow and took a few hours to get interesteing and for a adventure game this is not great. I don't want to spoil anything, but the last act throws a lot on you, that wasn't hinted throughout the game that this maybe how it will end. This is good and bad. Just it came from nowhere. The game wraps up really well. It was enjoyble, connects all the little hints, that you see, but from which you can't piece the ending before you see it. It's hard to explain without ruining the end, so trust me on this one. I just wish the story wasn't dragging so much in the beginning.

For an adventure game the most important things for me are story and puzzles. I already cover the story. As for the puzzles I can say they are not hard. I was stuck briefly on one or two. All of them have common sense – pick up this, put it there, combine objects, look at some inside your inventory or around you. I didn't find any obscure or illogical. Some of them are quite unique. They are 3D puzzles. What I mean is you look an object and you can rotate the camera around it in 360 degrees. I like them, but they are few and far between.

You have a conversation system with 3 type of answers most of the time, but what will a character say when you choose “positively”, “negatively” or “questionably”, you can't really tell. Most of the times they will say things that doesn't sound like what you choose.

The graphics are alright. Here all backgrounds are 3D, not pre-render like older adventure games and they look great. But some characters model doesn't look that good, like Maxs for example. And NPC's also suffer with the lack of enough polish.

Also the character movement is not good. It looks cluncky. It's like the game didn't came out in 2008.

The level design is really great. I like all the places you visit and they have a lot of detail put in them. There almost always things that can be clicked just for the character to say something and they are not essential for the story and puzzles. It's great to have a minor thing like that. It's about the atmosphere. Even something like Lara's office looks nice and have enough background details to feel like a real place.

For me the worst part here is the sound design, especually the voice acting. It's bad. It's not unbearably bad, but still. The only one I like is the narrator. Lara and Max suppose to have accents, but the feel forced and the line delivery is not great. At one scene Max is supose to be angry, but it's so badly played and I just cringe. This ruin the moment.

As for the music I can't point a single track. It's not bad, it's just nothing special, nothing to remember. Most of them include a piano, but the melodies feels like i've heard them before in movies and games. There are occasional deep male vocals accompanied by orchestra, but non of the tracks contribute that much for the atmosphere.

The sound effects are are really good. Things like walking, moving an object, hitting crushing and envoirmental sounds and feel proper. I wish the music and voice acting were on the same level.

There are quite number of issues I have with the game, mostly are minor things, but nonetheless they drag the game down. Cutscene. They don''t look good. They are blurry, like you have something on the screen. Character movement. When you make Lara or Max take something, for example, it take them ages to do it and it's frustrating. Speaking. When character observe something, he is saying out loud. Sometimes it's important and an NPC shouldn't hear it. It's bizzare. Lip sync. It's bad and you can even barely seen the mouths moving. Camera. A lot of times obstruct my view and I wonder around trying to figure out what am I supose to do. And in cutscenes often is badly placed and heads are cutoff. Lara. She is not an interestig character. I didn't care for her like I care about Max. Some are minor issues, but when you combine with the pacing of the story and bad voice acting, you see why the game is dragged down.

I consider Memento Mori decent adventure game. As a whole the game won't be stuck in my mind, but the ending will be. It have great locations, good plot, not-so-hard puzzles and few endings, but pacing, bad voice acting and other little issues drag the game down. I recommend it, but on deep sale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYhPCc607uw

I love weird games in any kind of sense and Fearless Fantasy is such. The creatures are not typical, the battle system is not entirly typical. At first glance, it seems like another mobile port and to some degree it is, but make no mistake – it's defenently worth your time and money.

The main character here is Leon, the best bounty hunter in the world. He's tricked by princess Alice to save her from arrange marriage and they start a quest to stop an evil king. Along their journey, the company is joined by Vonn, friend and fellow bounty hunter of Leon, to help them with their quest. Together they have to stop the bad guy and kill a terrifying monster. The story is cheesy, simple and there in nothing to remember, except the character interaction. The writing is surprisingly fun. Cheesy, but fun. Dialogs between everyone is good. It won't win any awards, but I didn't want to skip any of the cutscene.

The option are bare-bones. Sound sliders, fullscreen, dynamic camera and visual effects. There are non rebindle key, because it's entirly mouse driven game.

The developer put a little twist on the traditional JRPG's battle system for the player to be more involved. You choose a regular attack or special. Then arrows and/or circles appear on screen and with the mouse you have to slide and/or click on them at precise moment. Better you do, more damage you make. Different skill have different patterns. Some even takes quite a few seconds to do and this keeps you on edge. This is the case with the enemies. When they make a move, you will do the same thing. Better you do, less damage you take and later in the game, this may be the difference between life or death. All skill require energy. Sometimes character can be blinded, but you can still make a flawless move. I really like this battle system. It's not just click to choose, it involves you and it's awesome! But it can also make you rage-quit, if you mess up.

All enemies have description and from here comes the strategy part. Some enemies while they are alive, his allies receive less damage from range attack, but when they are left alone, they die and so on. So you have to decide to kill the other creatures first or the single one that provide this buff. And this is kinda cool.

The skill are acquired by leveling up. When this happens, you have one point to put in stats and one in skills. All skills can be level up 5 times. Their sound and especially visual design is great.

After a battle you will get gold. With him you can buy weapons, items and gadgets. All are pretty standard. You have to be at certain level to get better weapons, items and gadgets. I wish there were more things to buy.

Beside the battle system, the graphics and charatcer design is what caught my eye at first. Both are amazing!!! All creatures are non standard and I can't even describe them. A mushroom with a some sort of shotgun and an evil flower. This is the best I can do. They are really weird in a good way. A lot of thought is put in them. The backgrounds are great too. They have this oil painting style and I like it. It's different than the characters. The bosses are really fun to fight. All have some sort of support, like tentacles or other characters, that have some buffs and you have to decide from who to start. They require some strategy.

As for the level design, there isn't much to say. You have a static map and there appear the next level. You click on it, choose the difficulty, represented as stars, fight 3-5 wave of enemies and that's it.

The suprise for me is the soundtrack. It's great!!! I want to listen it every day. It's that good. All tracks are fast-paced techno and really fits the combat on screen. Sadly, you can't buy it or find it anywhere.

Sound effects are great. All have enough punch to feel satisfying and when you combine it with visual effects, they get even better.

The voice acting is really nice and I wasn't expecting any. I like Leon, he's bold, cocky, looking for a fight and he always have something to say. Vonn and Alice have their different personality. Non of them three characters are original or complex, but their conversations are fun to watch.

I have few problems with the game. The first and most important is the lack of any information about the debuffs you get. Some you can recognize, like poisoning, but others you can't, at least in the beginning. All have icons beside of characters name and with time you will know them, but I think it would be better if I hover the mouse over them to show me some information. The second is grinding. It isn't much, but had to repeat few level to get some money for new gear. Next is minor. When enemy is about to attack on screen you see “Tap when ready”. Come on, it's a PC game remove tap and put click. Next is audio in cutscenes. It feels really compressed. Other conversations have much better quality. And lastly the combat. I can't comment the mobile version, but the games feels kinda clunky when you have to use the mouse to execute the moves. Further into the game they become longer and complicated. It feels more natural to swipe with fingers. Despite that it's really fun. Oh, and tutorial for the combat is nowhere to be found.

Overall I had fun with the game. It's defenently worth the asking price. If it was more, I would say wait for a sale. The game is not super long. It will take you 3-5 hours to beat it. There is three star rating system and from here come some replayability. I didn't maximise all my skill and I still beat the game, so for me it's not worth on the hardest difficulty, because the fighting become faster and this can make me break my mouse. The battle system, creature design and soundtrack are really great and because of them you can overlook the shortcomings. I recommend it.